Alone in the Dark II (V)

Uwe Boll, we get it. You really really like making horror video games into shitty movies. You’ve made your point, and you can stop now. A movie came out this past year that had cameo performances from PJ Soles, Danny Trejo, and starred Bill Moseley, and Lance Henrikson. With a banging lineup like this, it seems that this should have been an absolute cult hit complete with nerdy fans in costumes. However, this was part of the lineup for Alone in the Dark II. Yes, a sequel to the same film that raped a horrifying video game adaptation and threw Tara Reid into a film where she had to actually act scared without a piece of food in front of her. The original film starred Christian Slater and regretfully, he isn’t starring in the sequel. One would assume that they’d replace him with a look-a-like of some sort, right? I mean, that would be the logical thing to do, wouldn’t it? Apparently I’m alone on this one because some BRILLIANT casting director replaced him with the Asian guy from Fast and Furious.

Uwe Boll may have only been the producer of this film, but the directing job was given to Peter Scheerer and Michael Roesch; who wrote the first Alone in the Dark as well as Boll’s House of the Dead II. If this glittering resume doesn’t draw you in enough, maybe the fact they wrote Boll’s upcoming film Far Cry will reel you in. In the simplest terms, the three people responsible for some of the worst films of the decade are at it again.

Alone in the Dark II is quite possibly one of the worst films I’ve ever had the displeasure to sit through. Watching the dog lick it’s own ass in the middle of the living room was more entertaining than this film. The script is terrible, the pacing is ridiculous, the character development is non existent, and the acting is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. If American Idol was a show about acting, the acting in Alone in the Dark II would be the bad auditions they put on TV just to make fun of. Watching Asian Slater attempt to look like he’s in pain while pouting his lips and panting like he ran a marathon was downright painful. The acting wasn’t even “so bad, it’s campy” it was just horrible. While I have no problem with re-casting if needed, I don’t understand why they would switch ethnicities to the MAIN character. It took about 25 minutes or so for me to realize that he was supposed to be Christian Slater’s character, and it completely took me out of the film. (Not like I was all that invested in the first place). Another scene in the film has one of those “but they can’t be dead!” endings, and magically one of the characters survives a bullet in the leg and the face from point blank and even has the stamina to giggle back to the cabin as if he just pulled a splinter from his leg.

The pacing was so out of control awful that I literally went to pull the popcorn out of the microwave, came back, and had no idea how the hell they got to where they were, why they were there, and what it had to do with the plot.

Even in the new millennium, special effects couldn’t save this film. There’s some pretty awful CGI and all of the actors have the aim of the A-Team. They must have unloaded about 400 rounds to the glowing CGI monster that resembled something Robert Rodriguez would put in the films he lets his kids write. The worst offender in this however, was the makeup job. There’s this dagger that belongs to the witch/CGI monster that leaves you scarred if you touch it. While I was hoping to get some sick scars and mutations, I was given something that resembled whipping someone with a tree branch and putting silly putty over it. Homemade makeup effects aren’t that difficult, and they still managed to find a way to screw it up.

Do yourself a favor; pretend this film was never even made. I’m still struggling to find a way to erase this from my memory.